


Jennifer and the Shadow People

by stefrobrts



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Case Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-02-24
Packaged: 2018-05-22 23:42:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6097778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stefrobrts/pseuds/stefrobrts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What would it be like to live in a haunted house? What would you do? Who do you call for help when things get weird? If you're lucky, and you just happen to know the right people..well, sit back and let Jennifer tell you about the time her house was invaded the shadow people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jennifer and the Shadow People

**Author's Note:**

> I was having a bit of writers block, and a friend suggested I write something completely different from the usual case fic. This is what came out. There is a bit of an homage to an early Simpson's Treehouse of Horror in there. Enjoy!

I had been in the house for almost two years when I started hearing the voices. I wasn't in the house all the time of course. Oh no, I worked, I shopped, I came and went as I pleased. Sometimes I was out until late at a movie, or with friends. I would come home at three AM and the house would be waiting for me, its' same old cozy self. I never once believed that it wasn't mine. I never had a clue. 

It wasn't until I began to decorate a little that weird things started happening. Nothing particularly odd, just little things. Frankly, I blamed myself. I mean, at the ripe old age of thirty I wasn't exactly senile, but I was busy. Sometimes you forget things. It happens. I would put something down, and not remember where I left it, and then discover it in an odd place. I really thought I had lost it when I put a paint roller in the refrigerator. How was I to know they didn't like purple? But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I bought some new furniture. Of course it wasn't new new. Who do you think I am, Bill Gates? I bought stuff at auctions, at second hand stores downtown. You should have seen me fitting the oversized art-deco bureau into my little convertible. If a cop had seen me I would have been ticket bait for sure. But I made it, and slowly my house began to look like a home. The walls were colors of my choosing and the furniture was stuff I had picked out, not hand-me-downs. I thought I had it made. 

Then I heard the voices. 

At first I thought someone was calling me while I was painting the bedroom. Like I said, I had started making the place my own, and I had picked this beautiful purple color. It really stood out against the light colored pine furniture I had scored at a yard sale. Well, you hear someone calling, what do you do? I put my roller down and wandered out into the front room, thinking it might have been a neighbor come to visit. Maybe even that cute guy who lived across the street, wouldn't want to miss that. So I put down the roller, setting it carefully in the tray, at least that's how I remember it, and went out to the front room. Nobody's on the porch. So I step out and see my neighbor, old Mrs. Peterson, walking down the sidewalk. Now usually I only hear from Mrs Peterson when she's got something to bitch about, and believe me, if it isn't me, it's someone else on the street. She's always got something to say about everyone, some conclusion she jumped to after only having spoken to them once, or the whole life story she made up about the guy who came in a beat up pickup truck to do landscaping at the Clinkski home on the corner. I listen to her for a bit and try to get out of it. "You may be right," I say, trying to look very serious, nodding along, while I'm thinking, "You old nut, why don't you move to Florida already?" But I digress.

So I saw Mrs Peterson scampering, well alright, hobbling, away from my house and thought she might have wanted something. I'm of the opinion that it's better to find out now then to hear it from my neighbors after she spends the week complaining to them about me, like the time I hung my, um, foundation garments out on a line in my backyard to dry and she told everyone in the neighborhood that I was some kind of pervert because I had RED PANTIES of all things. I'd rather have known that one ahead of time, maybe I could have headed her off before she told the cute guy across the street about it. Not that that helped. Some guys would have been right over here asking me out to dinner after getting that information, but I've seen him leaving early on Sunday morning and I get the feeling he might be a little devout for red undies, if you know what I mean.

So anyway, I chased Mrs Peterson down, only to find out she didn't want anything. She hadn't even knocked on my door, and come to think of it she isn't the kind of person who would have just shouted through the screen anyway. If she hadn't got an answer after knocking on the open screen door (which she didn't), she probably would have just burst on in, or called the police, depending on which TV shows she had watched the night before.

So I went back in the house, and voila, no paint roller. Well, I thought I left it in the tray. It was full of paint, where else would I have put it? So I decided to go get a drink of water while I puzzled it out. No one else in the house, not even a pet to steal it like the cocker spaniel I grew up with who liked to hide my socks under the bed. So I went and got a glass out of the cupboard and opened the fridge to get out the water jug and bam, there it is, a wet paint roller, loaded with purple paint. Paint was everywhere, running down the shelves, dripping into the vegetable crisper. 

The paint roller was in the fridge, but as I cupped a wad of paper towels under it and walked it back to the bedroom to set it in the paint tray, I realized there were no drips on the floor. How weird is that? I could barely get it from the fridge to the tray without making a mess, but somehow I had carried it out there without getting any of it on the floor. Well, thanks for small miracles. At least I didn't have to spend my afternoon cleaning the carpet as well as the fridge. But I did have to clean the fridge, and it was a pain in the ass.

About a week after the paint in the fridge incident, which, believe me, freaked me out a little. I mean, what was wrong with my head that I would have done that? I made a mental note to talk to my doctor about it during my annual, though, come to think of it, a mental note probably wasn't the best idea, considering the circumstances. Anyway, a week or so later I heard voices again. 

"Jennifer, come here, I need you." 

Great, now I'm channeling my Mother. What's she going to do, make me take out the trash? So I wandered through the house, but there's no one there. I was so sure I heard it, but how can you tell, you know, if it's inside your head or outside? I flipped on the lights in each room as I wandered through. I even said hello into the darkness, waiting to see if anyone answered me. What would I have done if someone had? Probably would have spent the night in the convertible and had Mrs Peterson's tongue wagging for a week, that's for starters. 

But, there was nothing to find, at least nothing I could find at the time. I sat back down on the couch in front of the TV, with an old Katherine Hepburn movie on, and turned the volume up a little more. That night I slept on the couch with the TV on. It just seemed like the thing to do.

Three days later I was at work when someone came in with a box of kittens. I picked out a cute little black one. I've always had a soft spot for black cats. I kept him in a box by my desk all day until it was time to go home, and I really thought the little guy was warming up to me. He spent the afternoon on my lap while I sat at my desk working on a report on the computer. Cute little guy. I decided to call him Kit. Yeah, yeah, not very original, go tell someone who cares.

So I got Kit home, and took him out of the box and put him on the floor in the living room. "Welcome to your new home," says I. In return the little guy suddenly goes completely deranged on me, absolutely nutso! He puffs up like one of those spiny puffer-fish, so he's just a little kitty face on the end of this giant round ball of fur. His tail sticks straight out behind him, and before I can show him to the litterbox, he leaves a surprise right there on the wood floor, just squirts it out. Then , as if that wasn't enough of a show, he lets out the most horrible screech I ever heard in my life, and I was present when friend gave birth a couple years ago. It was some nutty thing where she wanted her girlfriends present along with her midwife and we all listened to whale songs while she cranked out a new life and simultaneously realized the error of her ways and the blessed science behind painkillers, but still, none of the noises I heard that night compared to the one noise this little kitty pumped out. Just like that, BANG, he headed straight down the front hall, hit the screen in what must have been a weak spot, the mesh folded back and the little guy was gone into the night. I almost expected to see a little kitty-shaped hole in the screen, like in the cartoons.

So things hadn't gone so well with Kit. I put food and water out for him on the porch and he would sneak up and eat it, but he'd run like hell if I opened that door. So after that we had a more distant relationship. Sometimes I would take a folding chair out into the lawn away from the house and he'd come sit in my lap. Not exactly the kind of company I was hoping for, but better than nothing. In some ways I respected him. He didn't like something about the house, and he wasn't hanging around to find out what. Not like I could do that. I had a mortgage to pay, I wasn't giving up without a fight. Plus I had just painted, and you all know how hard that is. Like hell I was going to leave. 

At night I laid on the couch and watched old black and white movies, and tried to ignore the voices in the background. I told myself they were my imagination, or the effects of bad reception, but I think deep down inside I knew there was more to it than that. I would have to find out what it was in my own sweet time.

\----

The voices didn't really bother me too much. I usually had a TV or the radio on anyway, so I let modern media drown them out. When I did hear them I thought they spoke my name, but that seemed too good to be true. Surely I was just pulling my name out of the air because it was the word I was most familiar with. 

When the imps showed up, I knew it was time to ask for help. 

Now, I never would have called them imps until someone who was wiser than me, or insane, I couldn't really tell, explained to me that was the proper term for them. I was going to call them shadow people, but I was working on a cooler name for them. I thought maybe I was the first one to see something like that, and so I should name them. I was also going to bring that up to my doctor at my annual exam. I was starting to think I should call the little guys brain-tumor-people, or something like that. I figured I was really going nuts. 

I was laying on the couch, watching TV one night. There was some dumb-ass movie on, where Captain Kirk was trying to save a town being attacked by tarantulas, complete with lots of gratuitous spider squishing and guts popping out and splattering everywhere, typical bedtime fare, when I saw something dark run down the hallway, just at the extent of my vision. I got up and went and looked, thinking maybe Kit had finally come inside. It was raining outside, and it would have made sense if he'd finally decided to trade a dry, albeit haunted, house for sitting in the bushes outside, but I couldn't find anything. I sure would have been glad for the company. I never would have brought up his previous cowardice to him, you know, just to rub it in. I'm not that kind of person.

So I laid back down, and before Kirk could back the truck over another spider, something, I swear this is true, ran up the hall, snugged up tight to the corner, and peeked around at me. I tried not to look at it, but as soon as my eyes darted over there, it had disappeared. Very annoying. Then I saw what looked like a whole troop of them, like the seven dwarves heading for work, all in a row, tromping off towards my bedroom. My only thought - well, looks like I'm sleeping on the couch again tonight.

\----

With the little shadow people tromping around my house at night and the voices chattering at me by day, I was getting pretty tired. I was staying late at work, going out to see movies, even rotten ones, just so I could avoid going home. I even watched a movie and it got out at 10:30, and the last movie in the theater had started at 10, so I went outside and bought a ticket and came back inside to sit in the theater even though it was a half hour into the movie, just so I could stay there a little longer. Not that this helped. The end result was I would get home at one AM and sit out in the driveway in my convertible, staring at the house, marveling at the open windows that had been closed when I left for work in the morning, and wish I didn't have to go inside. Normal people call the police when their house is open and unlocked when it shouldn't be, but I knew better. There was nobody inside. Nobody the police could arrest anyway. I needed special help.

I spent part of my day at work digging through the phone book. Surprisingly there are listings under Psychics, but they weren't very helpful. I didn't need anyone to read my palms or the bumps on my head, and I doubted my future could be foretold by the tarot readers. I thought about talking to a priest or someone like that, but my irregular attendance at church left me without any good contacts there. I read on the internet about ghost-busters, but most of them sounded like a bunch of freaks. Even with disembodied voices floating around my home I wasn't going to believe EVERYTHING I read.

I had a friend back in college. A real bookworm type, but she was always so levelheaded, I often thought about her after we lost touch. She ended up studying physics or something, tougher stuff then I went for. I'd mostly see her at the pizza joint on campus where we'd both end up hanging out late at night studying. If she hadn't married and changed her name I might be able to find her. If she even remembered me, she might be able to help somehow. Best of all, since she wasn't in my immediate circle of friends and co-workers, if she thought I was completely nuts it wouldn't effect my otherwise spotless reputation for being somewhat sane. 

So I called Dana Scully. She was in the phone book, and we had a nice talk. She worked for the FBI now, I had no idea. I never would have pictured that. She stayed in school long after I left, because she had double majored or some damn thing, and had become a physician in addition to getting a degree in Theoretical Physics or something. Overachiever. Made me glad I pursued my degree in Liberal Arts. But hey, smart people do smart things, right? The rest of us do, well, whatever we can get away with.

We talked for about an hour, catching up on what each other was doing, talking about old times. I had kept touch with a couple people from school and she wanted to hear how they were doing. I thought she would want to get me off the phone quick, but surprisingly, she seemed to want to stay on more than I did. I finally got up the nerve to tell her about the voices.

"You're hearing voices in your house?" Her voice conveyed more disappointment than disbelief. I felt kind of bad about that. Now she probably thought my motor wasn't firing on all cylinders, if you know what I mean.

"Well, I just can't figure out where they're coming from. I tried to trace them down, follow them, but I can't find anything. I've been ignoring them, thinking it was just the house settling, or my imagination, or a brain tumor, you know, something explainable. I just don't know what to do about it anymore."

"And you called me?" 

I felt like I'd let her down somehow. "I always thought of you as being the most levelheaded person I knew. You could figure out any puzzle. So I thought of you. I don't mean to impose on you, especially not with something as stupid as this must sound. I just thought you might be able to give me a direction to go. I tried looking up people who handle these kinds of things, but they all strike me as, well, nuts."

"So you didn't call me because you thought I might know something about this problem?"

"No, no. Dana, just touching base with you has been great. I don't know why we don't keep in touch better. Look, I shouldn't have brought up the voices. Now I sound nuts." I hemmed and hawed a little. "I should let you go."

"No, wait. I thought you might be calling because you had found out I work for a division in the FBI that investigates paranormal phenomenon. You just called me out of the blue?"

"You're someone who's opinion I trust. That's why I called." There was a long pause, longer than it seemed like it should have been. She had either hung up, and I hadn't heard the click, or she was giving this some serious thought.

"Give me your address. I'll swing by tomorrow evening with my partner. Maybe we can have a look around and help you out somehow."

"I'll take you both to dinner for your trouble. It'd be fun to catch up some more anyway. And maybe we can figure out what's going on."

"We'll be off duty, so I'll take you up on the dinner offer. I can't vouch for my partner." She wrote down my address, promised to see me tomorrow, and hung up. 

I hung up the phone and looked around. I had turned on every light in the house, but still thought I could sense shadows moving in the corners. Low muttering seemed to fill the air as if it were coming from the walls. I stood up. 

"Ok, listen up you creeps. No more freaking me out. I've got friends coming over tomorrow, and they're going to kick your ass. Hear me? You might as well get packing now." I stopped and listened. Nothing. No muttering. No shadows. I was completely alone.

"Goddamn it, is that all I had to do?" I walked down the hall and looked around the corner into my bedroom. Inside, it was quiet. I went inside and sat on the edge of my bed, then waited a few minutes and laid down on top of the covers, still fully dressed. Nothing made a peep. Nothing crept around the corners. I closed my eyes and fell asleep, and slept straight through until morning for the first time in months.

\---

I arrived home from work late the next evening. Not really late in the evening, but later than I usually got home from work. It seems inevitable that if you expect to meet somebody you're far more likely to get held up in traffic on your way there. I got stuck on the freeway behind a semi-truck accident. It was an hour before the cops could clear up the mess enough to route everyone off the freeway using the closest onramp, dumping me out into unfamiliar suburban territory where I wandered around a neighborhood frantically looking for a route back to my own neighborhood for half an hour. Eventually I stumbled upon the freeway again, but further down past the accident, and after that I zipped home. There I found a strange car parked on the street in front of my house, with two figures inside. 

"I can't believe you waited, I'm so sorry." I said as soon as I saw Dana's flaming red hair and knew it was her. "I got stuck behind an accident on the freeway, and it took me a while to get around it."

"I know, we heard it on the radio. I figured we'd give you a little more time."

"Heard it on the radio? I should have guessed, you being a detective and all." I gave her a quick hug. Neither of us were really huggers, so there was that awkward should-we-shouldn’t-we, but it seemed appropriate. I really was happy to see her. A moment later I was even happier.

"And who is this?" I said, as tall, dark and handsome got out of the passenger side of the car. I tried to reserve myself, since it was kind of dark, and my eyes could have been deceived, but still, he looked fine from where I was standing.

"This is my partner, Agent Mulder." Dana led the way and we all walked towards the house. "Mulder, this is Jennifer."

"Nice to meet you." He smiled and I realized that even by the dim light of the lamppost at the end of the driveway I was not the slightest bit mistaken. This guy was drop-dead gorgeous. "I understand you're having a problem with some strange voices in your house?" His voice was silky smooth, and for a moment I had a hard time remembering the voices, or that I even had a house. 

"Yes, well, I've been hearing voices. There's also been some other strange stuff going on. I don't want to waste your time. I'm sorry to have made you wait so long. I'm sure you need to get home to your wife, or uh, girlfriend?" Not my subtlest work, but it would do.

"No, actually, I'm interested to see what's going on here. Lead the way." He seemed so polite. I gestured for them to follow me, and just as I stepped up on the porch I noticed the lights inside looked the same as I had left them, and no windows were open, then I remembered. 

"Shit. I mean, um, I meant to tell you. Last night after I talked to you, Dana, I was so excited you were going to come help, I stood up and told the spirits to get packing because I was bringing in someone to chase them away. I was just kidding but all the phenomenon stopped and I actually got a peaceful nights rest last night."

"You're kidding?" She looked suspicious, like I had set her up. "You just ordered them away?"

"Yeah, well, I mean, maybe it was all in my head after all. I don't know." I unlocked the door and invited them in. 

"Actually some spiritual investigators recommend you talk to the spirits in your house and ask them to be quiet or go away. Sometimes that's really all it takes to end a haunting." Mr Mulder seemed well educated, yet he seemed to be taking all this quite seriously. I was re-evaluating my snap-judgement of ghost hunters.

They walked down the hall together and stood in my living room. Everything was very quiet. I followed them in and stood there, looking around like an idiot. Suddenly I wished something would make a sound. Anything. 

My stomach growled.

"Sorry." 

Dana began poking around the living room, checking out the walls. "Tell me about the age of this house. You bought it?"

"Yes, two years ago. I never had any problem until I redecorated and bought new furniture a couple months ago." I saw Agent Mulder wander down the hall towards my bedroom. "Bedrooms are to the right, bathroom's on the left." I shouted after him before turning back to Dana.

"It's just a house. I mean, nothing bad has ever happened here that I know of. It was built in the thirties. It's just a plain, little bungalow." I tried to casually peer down the hall to see where her partner had gone.

"Jennifer?" I heard Mr Mulder's voice. I felt unduly flattered that he had remembered my name, and overly impressed with the way it sounded coming off his lips.

"Yes?"

"Are you much of a housekeeper?" He asked. Dana and I looked at each other, puzzled, and walked back to join him. As we rounded the corner I saw to my horror, or relief, I didn't know for sure yet, that the mischievous spirits were back. Every drawer in my bedroom had been thrown open, and stuff was scattered everywhere. It was on the bed, hanging from the ceiling fan, draped over the lamps. I saw a pair of my bright red panties hanging on the shade nearest the door and snatched them up, and in one smooth motion tossed them behind my back towards the closet.

"Well, I usually keep it a little neater than this." I offered as I looked around. There had never been this much devastation before. Something was definitely up. I heard a knock on the door, which forced me to leave the two agents alone in the bedroom, amongst all my private things which were strung up like Christmas decor. At the door I found Mrs Peterson.

"Are you alright honey? I saw two strangers parked out in front of your home for over an hour before you got home from work."

Then you should have seen me greet them and invite them in, you nosey old bat, I thought to myself. Instead I said "No, it's fine. They're friends of mine."

I heard Dana coming down the hall towards me, her incredibly high-heeled shoes making a stiff clack-clack on the hardwood floors. I meant to ask her how she could walk in those things. I had never mastered them, though I had tried. I wouldn't mind the extra couple inches of height they would give me, that was for sure. However, now didn't seem to be the time to inquire.

"I'm sorry, Jen, Mulder wants to know if you have a basement." She seemed resigned to poking around a bit longer. I couldn't tell if she thought I had disarranged my whole bedroom to put on a show for them. Mr Mulder seemed impressed with the aftermath, but I think she would have rather seen things floating around by themselves.

"No, no basement." I answered.

"You have a basement," Mrs Peterson interrupted from outside the screen. 

"No, I don't Mrs Peterson. Two bedrooms, one bath, no basement."

"P'tosh, don't tell me that. I've lived here my whole life. All these houses were built the same. You have the same floor plan I do. You have a basement." She pulled the screen door open and came on in. She immediately headed for the kitchen.

"Friend?" Dana asked.

"Neighbor." I sighed. We followed the old woman.

"Right here." She had gone to the back door. There were three steps going down from the kitchen to the door, and a wall on the left of the landing. She was pointing at the blank wall. 

"It's a wall." I pointed out.

"Yes, but what do you think is behind it? Haven't you ever wondered what's here?"

"I don't have to wonder, it's a wall," I explained again.

"Well, that's where your basement is. It's been boarded up for years, ever since the Fergusons lived here in the fifties."

"What happened to the Fergusons?" Dana asked.

"Oh, I don't know, they moved away. Didn't like the neighborhood." The old woman said. "You should knock this wall in, you've got a cellar down there, I guarantee it. Good place to keep your potatoes." She turned and walked back towards the front door, delighted with her display of superior knowledge no doubt.

"Well, if nothing else, at least now I know where to keep my potatoes." 

Dana shook her head, barely suppressing a smile. "Well, let's tell Mulder and see if we can get him out of here. Do you still want to go to dinner? I'm starving."

"Oh yeah, I owe you just for coming out." We began walking towards the bedroom, where her partner was still poking around. "What do you think? I mean, other than that I'm nuts, because I'm fairly certain that I am not."

"I don't think you're crazy, Jen. There are a lot of reasons for things like this. It's possible that when we get that basement open, there might be an explanation down there. It could be something as simple as a broken vent, with air blowing through it, making sounds like voices. I read an article once about how very low frequency vibrations from an office ventilation fan left a scientist thinking he was seeing things out of the corner of his eye." 

"But what about the mess in the bedroom?" 

"I remember what your dorm room looked like. You never were much of a housekeeper." She replied with a sly smile.

"Ouch." I couldn't deny it. "I've improved a bit in the years since, though."

When we arrived back in the bedroom I was appalled to see that Agent Mulder was on his hands and knees looking under my bed. There was no telling what could be under there, and if I'd known there was going to be someone peeking around I would have cleaned up and dusted a bit. I guess I should have figured that out if I'd just thought ahead.

"Hey, Scully, did you find a basement?" He stood back up and dusted his knees off. 

"Yes, but it's boarded up. Find anything here?"

"I checked the windows, they all seal tight. I thought I could feel a breeze coming from under the bed, but I couldn't see where that was coming from. It might have been a cold spot." He turned to me. "Sometimes cold spots are associated with intense spirit activity."

It would be nice if there was activity of any sort associated with my bed for a change, but I decided not to bring that up. "Under my bed? Should I move it?"

"Maybe, let's find out what's in the basement."

"Let's go to dinner first, Mulder. Jen's treat." Dana grabbed him by the arm and directed him towards the front door. I took one last look at my panty-covered bedroom and cold bed, shook my head in amazement, and followed them out to the car.

\---

 

I took them to a Chinese food place not far from my house. I had been coming here a lot lately anyway, so I knew they were pretty good. They served the food up family-style, which I always enjoy when with friends, it's fun to pass the plates around and see who picks out what. I feel it always makes for a more relaxed atmosphere then places where they just bring everyone a plate. 

"So what do you do now, Jen? You said it was something to do with computers?" Dana started the conversation off on a non-ghostly note.

"Yes, I'm the data interchange coordinator for a large manufacturing firm on the East side. I'm in charge of corporate and inter-departmental data interchange, and I'd tell you more but I see your eyes are starting to glaze over already, and I don't want you to pass out and hit your head on the edge of the table." I dug into my Happy Family, digging out the scallops first with my chopsticks. 

"What condition was your bedroom in when you left this morning?" Mr Mulder asked. He obviously had a one track mind. I got the feeling he was ready to head back to the house having hardly touched his moo-shu pork.

"Everything was in the drawers, neat as a pin. This is the first time anything like that has happened though. Until now it's always been weird little things, like stuff not being where I left it. I was literally about to get my head examined. I still might. I keep losing my keys, or my address book which should always be by the phone. I found a paint roller in the fridge after I had to go answer the door while painting the bedroom."

"Where do you keep the address book?" He asked.

"By the phone in the second bedroom. I use that room as a den."

"So would you say the activity is strongest in the bedrooms?" His forehead wrinkled as he thought about it, and his dark eyes almost disappeared under heavy brows. I knew I should have been more attentive, more respectful of someone who was trying to help me solve my haunting problem, but every time I looked at him my brain shut off momentarily. 

"The bedrooms and the hallway," I finally answered, forcing my mind to focus, focus.

"Mulder, I don't think we should jump to any conclusions here. There's probably a rational explanation," Dana started to say, but he leaned towards her and interrupted.

"It's classic symptoms that the haunting activities should be confined to particular locations in the house. Did you say," he said, turning to me, waving a shrimp he had caught in his chopsticks, "That you brought in new furniture as well?"

"Yes, I bought used furniture here and there and filled the house with it."

He leaned towards Dana again. "Often hauntings are related to physical disturbances in the house, like remodeling. Also, some hauntings can be attached to pieces of furniture themselves."

I groaned to myself. I wasn't sure if this was better than just suffering through it by myself. Having this man talking about it like it was something real was, well I guess it was kind of a relief, because at least I wasn't the only one who thought it was real. Then again, it was even scarier than if he had just said it was my imagination. 

"Is this for real?" I asked Dana. She shrugged.

"I wouldn’t worry too much about it this early in the investigation. We'll know more when we get a look in the basement."

"How should I go about that?"

"I can help you knock down that wall," Mr Mulder offered. "If you wait to hire someone it could be weeks before you find anything out."

"Well, I'm not sleeping there again until we get this figured out, so I'll take whatever help you've got to give."

"If you've got some tools, I'll come back with you after dinner and see what we can do. Do you want to come Scully?" He caught her with the question just as she was stuffing, daintily as it were, a forkful of Buddhist’s Delight into her mouth.

"Sure, why not? We can catch up while Mulder knocks your wall down." She said with a smile. I had a feeling she had been through this all before.

\----

It was nearly midnight before Mr Mulder, oh, I mean Special Agent Mulder, broke through. Dana and I had spent the last couple hours on the couch, catching up on what we'd been up to since college. She had been pretty tightlipped about what she had been doing specifically, but I figured being FBI, there was probably a lot she couldn't talk about. While we talked we could hear Mr Mulder working in the kitchen with a hammer and a crowbar, reducing my kitchen wall to dust and splinters while we chatted.

"I'm through," he said, his voice giving away how excited he was, as he popped his head around the corner. His hair was covered in plaster dust, his collar unbuttoned. His loosened tie hung low around his neck and the tail was tossed back over his shoulder. "Come look."

Dana entered the kitchen and carefully picked her way over the pile of debris to peer down into the darkness of my newly uncovered basement. She produced a small but powerful flashlight from somewhere on her person, and focussed the beam through the hole. Mr Mulder was still catching his breath from the vigor of demolition, and hung back, watching.

"Well, it's unfinished. It looks like there's a brick foundation wall all around, and the floor is dirt." She stepped back and looked at the hole, barely big enough to crawl through. I poked my head in as well. There was a small landing on the other side of the wall, and then rickety looking stairs that went down to the dirt floor of the basement. "Who wants to go first?" Mr Mulder nearly bowled me over in his eagerness to dive through the hole. Dana gave me a knowing nod as he disappeared into the darkness.

We waited topside while he rummaged around underneath my house. "So, have you investigated hauntings before?"

"Well, we have occasionally investigated," she paused, "odd situations that may or may not have involved.." she searched for the right words, then seemed to resign herself to an answer she wasn't as happy with. "Yes." 

"Cool." I looked into the hole again. I could see Mr Mulder's flashlight beam lighting up the walls occasionally, bouncing around as he walked. The light beam began bouncing along the floor until it arrived back at the gaping hole in the kitchen wall, Mr Mulder tagging along behind.

"There were some loose heating ducts under there. I tried to fit them back into place. I can't imagine why anyone would close this off. I can't see any other way to access this area, and the homeowner would need to get under here occasionally for maintenance."

"Well I think it was a rental for many years before I bought it. Maybe it just never bothered anyone, since there were just renters living here."

"Possible." He mounted the stairs and pulled himself back through the jagged hole. "I'd like to stay the night and see if there are any more phenomenon, if you don't mind." 

"Sure, if you think it would help." I tried to remain calm, but my stomach was doing flips. I'd been here two years, and I hadn't had a guy spend the night yet. Suddenly these ghosts were the best thing that had ever happened to me.

\-------------------

Not that I was expecting anything. I happened to look out the window after he walked Dana out to the car. After she got in he leaned against the roof, hunched over close to talk to her. Finally she started the car, and he almost stepped away, but then I saw him lean over and say something else to her through the window, or perhaps she had asked him something, I couldn't really tell. Either way, something about it stopped me in my tracks. It sobered me, and made me remember to be serious. After all, he was here to help, and most important, he was interested in the ghosts. 

He let himself back in through the front door, and I heard him throw the deadbolt behind him. 

"So, tell me more about the strange voices you hear. What time of night, what part of the house, that sort of thing." He said, standing over where I sat on the couch.

"Well, anytime really. I've heard them during the day, at night while I'm watching tv. I've heard them in the bedroom, and in the living room. I don't see anything, I just hear someone calling me from another room. Once I thought it was my neighbor at the front door. I've seen things in the hallway quite a bit." I wiped my hand over my mouth, nervously, and looked over him, doused as he was in plaster dust. He looked into my eyes, and nodded.

"So, if I stay on the couch, that's a good place to watch from?" He asked, still nodding.

"Yeah, that's as good a place as any. I usually sleep on the couch because the disturbances in the bedroom were getting too creepy. You could try the bedroom." I clasped my hands in my lap, not knowing what else to do. "I think I'll stay out on the couch with the tv on again tonight." I paused, thoughts slowly rumbling through my brain. There was something I was forgetting, something I should do. "Excuse me," I said, as I rushed back to the bedroom and began frantically picking up the contents of my dresser drawers which were scattered around the room, and stuffed them back roughly where they belonged. I hurried back out, trying to look cool. Mr Mulder looked a little sheepish. 

"Is it safe now?" He obviously could tell how embarrassed I was by the whole situation. I nodded and waved a hand towards the bedroom.

"It's all yours." I followed him back to the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed while he snooped around the room, holding his hand over the heat register, checking the window for drafts, poking around in the corners, trying to peer behind the furniture with his little flashlight.

"So tell me," he said, making small talk, "how did you meet Scully?"

"Oh, Dana and I went to college together. I met her as a junior, and we spent quite a bit of time together the last couple years there. Seemed we often found ourselves hanging out together, studying late. We had some fun times, making munchie runs in the middle of the night. And there was one time we played a great prank on one of our former professors, but I'll let her tell you that one. She continued her education long after I left, I guess, and we lost touch." I stopped, listening. I was sure I'd heard my name called. There was only silence. I was probably hoping I'd hear something for company. Mr Mulder had stopped his exploration of the room and cautiously sat on the edge of the bed next to me. I thought hard for something to say, and then slowly came up with something. "How long have you known Dana?"

"Oh, she's been putting up with me for a few years now." He said looking slowly around the room as if he expected to see something. I was impressed. Even I wasn't that optimistic.

"So you two are..a couple?" I offered. It seemed obvious. The body language was there, the communication through glances. The way he hung over her car window saying goodnight before she left.

"No, no," he corrected me, almost embarrassed. "She's my FBI partner. We investigate cases together. We're together a lot, though. Travelling all over the country." He looked anywhere he could to avoid eye contact with me. "It's a difficult relationship to explain."

"Hey, I didn't mean to pry. You don't have to explain anything to me." I got up off the bed and quickly headed down the hallway. "But I don't think I want to stay in that bedroom anymore. I'm heading for the couch." I didn't even know why I said what I said, the words seemed to be pouring out, and suddenly I felt sick. Bad mu-shoo, I thought. Then my head started to do that whirly thing, and I put a hand on the wall for support. Two hands were on me before I could hit the floor, steadying me. 

"Whoa there, where's the fire?" Mr Mulder held me up for a moment, taking the weight off my feet enough that I got them back under me. This was bad, and I knew it. I had had bad migraines, bad cramps, but the whirly thing almost always put me horizontal. Strong hands helped me to the couch, and sitting there, I began to feel a bit better. "I'll get you some water." I heard him say. Then he was clomping around in the kitchen, searching the cupboards for a glass, I supposed. I didn't care. I put my head between my knees and forced myself to breath slowly until I felt his hand on my back. 

"I'm sorry, that happens sometimes since all this started." I took the glass from him, trying to ignore his worried look. "It comes on suddenly, but not usually so violent."

"I felt something too, like I was flushed and warm suddenly. Tingly. What was it?" He rubbed his hand up and down my back and I took another sip of water.

"I don't know," I whined, suddenly frustrated. "So many weird things have been happening around here. I can't even begin to explain them." The frustration suddenly turned to tears and I felt like an even bigger idiot for not being able to control that. I was a college educated professional, for God’s sake! I should have been cooler than this, but the words flooded out between the sudden and honest sobs. "It's like the damned things are just beating me down. I feel weird, I see things, I hear things." Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a shadow in the hallway. I grabbed Mr Mulder's arm and squeezed it, looking past him, my eyes wide. He stared at me for a moment, then slowly turned. 

"Holy sh..." He whispered. A whole column of shadows was flitting down the hallway towards the bedroom, visible, but not quite real, not quite solid. Like shadows of elves who didn't exist in this plain. His eyes were big and his mouth dropped open into a surprised little O. He started to walk towards the hallway, and I instinctively grabbed the back of his shirt, halting him. He brushed my hand away. "It'll be ok," and continued towards the bedroom.

I pulled my feet up onto the couch and curled into a ball in the corner. What if he didn't come back, what if he fell into another dimension? Dana would kill me. I almost chuckled to myself, I had asked HIM for help, and I was worried about him getting hurt by them. He was the expert. After all, they hadn't really hurt me yet, and I knew nothing. I wasn't smart enough to get out of my own way, yet I had managed to live with them all these months. What could they do to him?

I heard a heavy thump.

"Mr Mulder?" I uncurled a bit, leaning to peer down the hall. "Mr Mulder, are you ok?" There was no answer. Oh crap, I thought. This isn't good. I slowly walked back down the hall, running my hand along the wall the whole way. "Mr Mulder?" I called a couple more times. When I reached the bedroom I saw the light was on in the closet, the door swung nearly shut. I took a deep breath and pushed it open. 

Inside Mr Mulder was down on his hands and knees, pulling up the carpet. He hadn't heard me calling, he was just preoccupied. I was so relieved to see him ok, I just leaned against the doorjamb and slid down to sit on the floor. He glanced back at me. 

"They came in here. They marched right into the closet and disappeared into the floor. What were those?" 

"Oh, them? ” I chuckled uncomfortably. “I call them the brain-tumor people. Little shadow gnomes or some damned thing. Can you see why I needed help?" 

He finally got a good grip on the carpet and pulled it back. There was nothing but undisturbed hardwood floor underneath. He watched it expectantly, but nothing happened, finally he let the carpet fall back down and sat down to look at me. 

"So is this the kind of stuff you've been putting up with?"

"This and worse. The shadow gnomes don't bother anyone at least." I looked at him, plaster dust still in his hair. His eyes were lit up with the excitement of the chase, and I could tell this was like catnip to him. "I'm going back out on the couch. I usually get enough of a show out there." I stood and retreated back to the front room. There I turned on the TV and flipped around until I found an old monster movie. I curled up and pulled a blanket over me, tightening it up to my neck. I could hear Mr Mulder moving furniture in the bedroom. I hoped he was the one doing the moving anyway, either that or he was sitting back and enjoying the show. 

I watched the movie half-heartedly, not really having the concentration to watch it in earnest. The clumping in the bedroom stopped. Finally Mr Mulder returned to the living room. He sat down on the other end of the couch and looked at the TV. 

"Return to the Black Lagoon." 

"Yeah, I love these old monster movies. You too?"

"Oh yeah, I've seen them all." He leaned back and pivoted, stretching his long legs out on the couch towards me. "Do you like the old Vincent Price ones, Murder in the Rue Morgue, and the Pit and The Pendulum?"

"Vincent was the man. The Fly was my favorite. I'll take the classics any day over the modern version."

"Agreed. Even in black and white..." He drifted off, suddenly drawn to the movie like a magnet. I turned back to the tv. A 1950s bathing beauty was swimming in the lagoon, the monster's long-fingered hand tantalizingly close to grabbing her leg as she performed what looked like a synchronized swimming routine. 

"Ok, let's face it, no woman would willingly go swimming in that swamp. I mean, just think of the leaches, if nothing else," I pointed out skeptically. I hate it when movies use some unrealistic premise to create plot. 

"Maybe not, but that was probably a pretty hot scene back in the day."

"A little before either of our times, I'm afraid." I said, trying not to check him out from the corner of my eye.

"Jennifer."

I stopped short. The voices were back, and they remembered my name. Mr Mulder was also sitting bolt upright, his feet back on the floor. 

"Answer them," he whispered. 

"I don't want to do that," I hissed, shrinking even further under the blanket. "What if it encourages them?"

"You want to know why they're here, right?"

"No, I want them to go away. I don't care why they're here!"

"Answer them. Ask them to go away then," he nodded. He seemed so confident. I shivered and held my ground. He shook his head, frustrated. 

"We can hear you," he shouted out to the room. "What do you want? Tell Jennifer why you're here."

There was nothing, just the tv playing quietly. I wished I'd turned it up. I hated the voices, I'd rather not hear them, just be oblivious to the whole thing. But the good part was that someone else had now heard them. If I had invited company over sooner, I could have missed all those nagging doubts about my sanity.

"Do they speak to you often?" He sat back down and leaned back, obviously alert. He looked like a cat ready to spring. 

"Not everyday, but pretty often. Sometimes they call me, sometimes they ask me to come to them. Sometimes they just chat among themselves."

"This is amazing. I had hoped to hear something, see something. It's unbelievable to be lucky enough to get both in one visit." He patted my leg, like an old friend. "You have no idea how lucky you are. This place should be tested. We could get some people in here with electromagnetic monitors, Geiger counters, infrared video. It's a treasure trove."

“Easy for you to say, you don’t have to live here with them.”

“Come to us…” 

We stared at each other, silently confirming we had both heard that.

“The basement,” Mr Mulder jumped up and was back in the kitchen in a flash, and I hurried to keep up with him. Once again he climbed through the gaping hole in the drywall and disappeared into the black hole of my basement. Once again I felt a sinking in my stomach. What if something happened to him? Before I could consider the consequences of an FBI Agent disappearing in the basement, there was a flash, and I heard him faintly calling his partner’s name as his voice faded away.

 

“How long has he been in there?” 

“About half an hour, I called you right away.” I watched as Dana peered through the drywall hole with her flashlight. She had switched to jeans and a comfortable sweater, and looked more like the college student I remembered than the FBI Agent who had been at my house earlier that evening. We could still faintly hear Mr Mulder calling her name occasionally, but it sounded far away.

“Mulder, where are you?” She shouted down into the hole. 

Almost immediately we heard a crashing sound coming from inside the house, so we ran back towards the bedrooms, stopping abruptly in the hallway where Mr Mulder was gathering himself up from a pile of drywall after apparently creating a huge hole in the ceiling.

“Were you in the attic, I thought you were in the basement?” Dana asked, looking up through the ceiling hole.

“I have an attic?” 

“I WAS in the basement!” Mr Mulder dusted himself off and was already heading back to the basement. “I stepped into a wormhole of some kind. When you called me I was able to follow your voice back, and that is where I came out!” The sheer joy in his voice was almost contagious. We caught up with him just as he climbed back through the basement access hole. A moment later there was another flash and the sound of his voice fading away. “Scully…”

“Mulder?” She called back. We heard the crash upstairs in the hallway again. Mr Mulder charged back into the kitchen and raced back downstairs. Dana sighed and looked at me with an exhausted glance.

“He’s exuberant, isn’t he?” I observed as the basement lit up again with a flash. We heard her name being called in the distance. “Scullyyyyyy…”

“Have you ever owned a Labrador?” She asked. I considered it as she called him back one more time. This time though, I hurried back to the hallway to intercept him.

“Enough,” I stopped him in his tracks before the dust could settle. “Three ride limit on whatever the hell this is you’re doing.”

I decided that as the homeowner, I needed to take charge and put an end to the three-ring circus that had taken over my home. No more wormholes, no more shadow-gnomes, no more disembodied voices. I had had enough!

“I’ve had it with all of you!” I shouted to the walls, feeling like I was making a complete ass of myself in front of company, but helpless to do anything else. “You may not transport my friends around the house! You may not call us with your creepy voices! You may not skulk around my hallway! It all ends right here, right now. Take whatever is yours and leave!”

I felt something between empowerment and idiocy as we waited, listening to the silence. Then we heard a low rumbling, the house started shaking, and Mr Mulder gave us a wide-eyed look of surprise which caused both of us ladies to expediently evacuate the house, with him close behind. We ran all the way out to the street before turning back to see the house, shaking, vibrating, rays of light streaming out of it’s windows as if the sun itself had risen inside the house. 

We watched, stunned, as the house began to lift up off of it’s foundation. It folded and buckled into itself in a way that simply wasn’t possible in the 3D space we were used to living in. All three of us flinched and held up hands to block the whirling rays of light as the house hovered in mid-air for a moment, crumpled into a wad, and shot down into the ground. There was a temporary whirlwind at the center of the action, and then everything went quiet.

“Is everyone ok?” Mr Mulder laid a hand on each of our shoulders, and I nodded, as did Dana. She looked back at the house with wary eyes, as if she didn’t want to look too closely, else she would have to deal with it. 

“What in the hell am I going to tell people?” I looked at the flat, raw earth that covered the spot where my house had once stood.

“Sinkhole,” Dana began. She nodded to herself, approving of her own cleverness. “A sinkhole developed right under your house, and sucked it down. There must have been a subterranean cavern underneath it. Water moves through and weakens the ground under the house until its weak enough to collapse. That’s what we felt shaking which warned us enough to get out.”

“That wasn’t a sinkhole,” Mr Mulder protested. “That was a genuine paranormal phenomenon! There was light, and..levitating going on there!”

Dana set her jaw and doubled down on her theory. “Well, there were some odd things happening, but I’m sure they can all be explained by the instability..and the motion of the ground..and swamp gas. Flammable swamp gas.”

“Oh really? Really?” He threw up his hands and started to walk away. “That is so…”

I heard footsteps coming up behind me, and turned to see the handsome man from across the street coming towards me. What a day to show up! He’s had almost three years, and NOW he decides to come talk?

“Jennifer, are you ok?” He knew my name! Oh crap, what was his? I had been thinking of him as ‘Neighbor Tightpants’ for so long, I couldn’t remember. It had become a joke around work, the continuing exploits of Neighbor Tightpants. I should have known that if I kept calling him that, that’s all I would remember. Oh wait, Brian, it was Brian.

“Yes, Brian, thanks.”

“Dylan.”

“Dylan, yes, thanks.” Smooooooth.

“What happened to your house?” His voice indicated the high level of surprise he was feeling, and I decided to play it cool.

“Sinkhole,” I answered, with a shrug. “The whole thing, gone. But, uh,” I glanced at Dana and Mr Mulder, “My friends and I made it out, so that’s all that matters.”

“Your whole house is gone?!” He waved his hands in the direction of the house and his mouth opened and closed but no sound came out. I realized I was seeing the actual definition of flabbergasted. “Do..do..do you have sinkhole insurance?” He asked. I thought about it for a moment. 

“I have no idea.” At that moment I was distracted as a furry black creature rubbed up against my leg, purring. I reached down and picked him up. “Kit!”

“Is that your cat?” Dylan reached over and scratched Kit’s head. “He hangs out at my house a lot.” 

“I guess we’re going to get going,” Dana gestured awkwardly towards her car, “call me sometime. When there isn’t any…” I nodded, quickly, noting Mr Mulder already had his hand on the car door, giving me a little nod. She walked around to the driver’s side and I heard them briefly arguing sinkholes and swamp gas over the roof of the car before climbing in.

“Well, what are you going to do for the night? You should come over, I have a spare room.” Dylan said, drawing my attention back.

“Excellent, because I don’t have any rooms to spare.” I made a joke! Could I be any cooler about this? 

And suddenly it occurred to me that the spirits had done me a huge favor. After all, I’d been here for over two years and hadn’t really had a chance to get to know this guy, and here he was inviting me back to his place, saving me from the weirdness that had enveloped my life so suddenly. As I stood there looking at him, I thought, this is a pretty good outcome after all. Maybe those spirits weren’t so bad.

We were still staring at each other as a bright red pair of panties floated down and gently alighted on the driveway lamppost. He glanced at them in surprise, and I just closed my eyes and took a deep breath. 

What a bunch of jerks.


End file.
